Text, Culture, and Print-Media in Early Modern Translation: Notes on the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)

Summary

Within the history of translation between the Vulgate by St. Jerome (347–419/20) and the 1500s, more than a few landmarks are situated in early modern Germany, from Heinrich Steinhöwel's Esopus (1476) and Niklas von Wyle's Translatzen (1478) to Martin Luther's Bible. The diglossia of Latin and the vernaculars in a multi-lingual Europe makes the early modern period fascinating for the discipline of translation studies. This era marks the rise of an educated laity, the block book, and printing, and accordingly has been the focus of much investigative effort within the study of book history. Both translation studies and the history of the book have enriched scholarship, and each field seems curiously tangential to the other. The continuous debate within the sphere of translation studies over the relationship between cultural adaptation and linguistic remapping in the translation process seems peripheral to the history of the book, as the latter involves textual analysis but does not pay heed to the books' physical appearances. This article will fill in heretofore missing elements and reveal that print-media become crucial in rethinking early modern translation.